Most people my age recall televised tests of what used to be called the Emergency Broadcast System. We all heard, “If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news, or instructions” more times than any of us wanted to. These days, this program is a little less intrusive, and is called the Emergency Alert System (the need for a name change isn’t quite clear, but hey, this is government in action). But those tests do still go out. Just this past Thursday, September 21, people in Orange county, CA got a test warning with an unusual twist. As the Orange County Register explains, they were warning about the Armageddon that had been predicted for today, Saturday, September 23 (Archive.Is cached article):

Some Orange County residents were stunned Thursday, Sept. 21, when television programming was suddenly interrupted for about a minute with an ominous message predicting the end of the world.

Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest said she was watching the HGTV channel via Cox Communications about 11:05 a.m. when suddenly an emergency alert flashed across her screen followed by a voice.

“Realize this, extremely violent times will come,” a man’s voice boomed, according to a video of the alert.

The end-of-the-world message heard on some Orange County channels during an Emergency Alert System test on Thursday was a technical glitch prompted by a local radio station, broadcasting officials said on Friday.

KWVE-FM, a Santa Ana station that broadcasts Christian programs, was conducting the test for the region that did not properly kick off – prompting a pastor’s comments meant only for that station to be heard over TV and probably radio channels in the county and beyond.

“During a regularly scheduled test of the Emergency Alert System for Orange County, KWVE-FM experienced an equipment failure that resulted in KWVE-FM not sending the end-of-message tones that would disconnect those media entities participating in the Emergency Alert System test,” a statement from the station says.

“When KWVE-FM resumed its regular programming, approximately 90 seconds of that audio was sent to the rest of the participants of the Emergency Alert System test.”

KWVE-FM has volunteered to be the primary Emergency Alert System station for the area since the inception of the alerts in 1996 and has never experienced a similar equipment failure, the statement says.

That this supposedly-prophetic warning would go out this way, is an awfully specific “failure.” I’m not sure I buy this explanation. It seems too convenient. Besides, the station itself never ought to have issued this apocalypse warning to its own listeners in the first place, let alone everyone in Orange county via the EAS — because it’s not going to come true. Period. End of discussion.